The Degradation of the Bafut-Ngemba Forest Reserve Revisited: A Spatio-temporal Analysis of Forest Cover Change Dynamics

Globally, forest reserves are created with a premier objective to conserve important biodiversity and to ensure ecosystems services provision. Unfortunately, forest reserves in the global south are threatened by the tremendous rise in human numbers and the unsustainable exploitation of forest resources. This is the problem facing protected areas (PAs), including forest reserves in Cameroon. The Bafut-Ngemba Forest Reserve (BNFR) is just a case in point of the many transformed and ecological twisted forest reserves in the Western Highlands of Cameroon. The BNFR is no biodiversity paradise as the humanisation of the reserve has taken an unprecedented toll in recent times. The study updated forest cover changes within the reserve from previous studies spanning across 2010-2021 as a baseline data towards the effective design of sustainable forest conservation planning. Satellite remote sensing employing high resolution ASTER (15m) and real-time Google Earth images were used to assess the forest cover dynamics. Between 2010 and 2015, forest loss was mild, either -27.135ha. From 2015-2021, in just less than 6 years, 696.397ha of forest cover was lost. For the entire study period (2010-2021), at total of 723.532ha of forest is estimated to have been lost. Forest loss in the BNFR is linked to some four anthropogenic stressors; farmland encroachment, eucalyptus colonisation, wood harvesting and cattle grazing alongside inter-annual fires used for pasture regeneration and rangeland management. Conservation efforts are urgently needed should the remaining threatened biodiversity, mostly avifauna is to be protected in line with monitoring progress to global targets and SDG 15.1.1.